June 22, 2016

Export Gmail Email To PDF

Export Gmail Email To PDF

11:13 AM by Edwin J. Hoffer

Recently while searching about the topic ‘export all Gmail emails to pdf’, I read many forums and I came across a user query that was:“I have to collect all the Gmail emails of the year 2015-16 from all the 8 juniors of mine. I was thinking that the best way to present those emails is to create 8 separate PDFs for these 8 colleagues. I have searched on the internet but no solution seems to be relevant. Please suggest some methods (whether manual or tools based). I need a quick and efficient solution so that I can convert Gmail emails to pdf.

Thanks in advance. Ricardo”

As we all know, Gmail is one of the most common web-based email clients used worldwide. Since it is not a Desktop-based email client, it does not create a copy of your accounts data on your hard drive. But, many users (like the one above), for example, digital forensic investigators or transaction managers need to keep track of their data received via emails in PDF files for future reference. How will they download Gmail emails to pdf??

Let’s learn ways to bring the data of this web-based client to our desktops in PDF file format.

Why do we think it’s necessary to Export Gmail Email To PDF?

Your emails will no longer be dependent on any email client as they can be viewed like a normal document file when you export Gmail Email to PDF.

Now you may ask, Why not export emails to any other format rather than PDF? So here’s my third point for why you should export Gmail messages to pdf:

If you export your emails to any other file format (for example, doc or txt) in these formats, you can edit the texts but PDF creates an uneditable document file which is definitely a plus point for us.

How to Export Gmail Email to PDF?

There are two ways in which we can convert Gmail emails to PDF. The first one is the manual method and the other one is by using a third party tool.Manual Method
There is no direct method to export Gmail email to PDF. We can follow the below steps:

Step -2: For Outlook 2007 and previous versions, there is no direct option to save a file as PDF. So you should follow these steps:

Copy the contents of your email and paste the contents in the file. Create a word document.

Then convert the word document to PDF.

For Outlook 2010 and later versions, there is a direct option to save a single email as PDF.

As seen above, the manual method might take ages to be complete as you will have to convert each email to PDF. So, by using a manual method to export Gmail email to PDF, you cannot export bulk emails to PDF and also the PDF that might be created may lose it’s meta and hyperlink formatting.

So to ignore these limitations, let me introduce the second alternative method to export all Gmail emails to pdf, which is:

Using a Tool

You can follow below steps for this automated approach to download Gmail emails to hard drive in PDF file format:

Step-1: Convert your Gmail emails to PST file: this can be done in two ways,

You can configure your Gmail account to Outlook to export Gmail messages to pdf file format (like I have suggested in manual method). But the above method is preferred only for few emails, if you have multiple users and 1000s of emails then you can use the third party tool which is ‘Gmail Backup’, this tool ensures quick backup of multiple or single user Gmail accounts & save backed up data in PST and various other formats.

Conclusion:

So far we have discussed why do we need to export Gmail messages to pdf, the two ways, manual and automated ways to do so. The third party tool method helps us to Convert Gmail attachment to PDF too, which may not be possible in the case of a manual approach. Looking at all the scenarios, we can conclude that using automated approach is a reliable and time-saving way to achieve our target in this case.

Edwin J. Hoffer

Edwin J. Hoffer is a Technical Expert blogger, currently known for his immense contribution at PDF Tips blog. Apart from blogging, he loves to participate in multiple communities & forums rejoices in assisting troubled users.